Mary Wright and the Christian Center of Park City want to introduce Park City to the enneagram, and they will do this through a virtual seminar on Wednesday, Jan. 12.

The event, “Online Introduction to the Enneagram,” will run from 6:30-8 p.m., said Wright, a certified enneagram coach.

“The enneagram is a powerful personality system that describes nine distinct and different patterns of thinking, feeling and acting,” she said. “‘Ennea’ just means ‘nine’ in Greek and ‘gram’ means ‘symbol’ or ‘drawing.’ (So) the enneagram personality system is represented by the symbol of a circle with the nine types around it, with lines connecting all of the types.”

During the seminar, Wright will show participants core motivations of these personality types, and show how these types tend to look at the world.

Type nine, for instance, is called the Peaceful Mediator, according to Wright.

“They have a steady personality and are gifted at being able to see others’ point of view,” she said. “When nines get overly invested in this need for peace and harmony, it can lead to avoiding conflict at all costs, and they can lose themselves in the process.”

By using the enneagram, people can identify the patterns they tend to fall into and utilize tools that help them “step into their own power,” Wright said.

“When I teach the enneagram, I’ll always tell people that where our attention goes, our energy follows,” she said. “Our patterns of where we devote our energy are really automatic. It’s kind of like we are on auto-pilot as we interact with ourselves and others. So learning the enneagram is about recognizing our patterns so that we can interrupt them and expand our choices for how we respond. I find that really empowering.”

Wright hopes participants will learn to use the enneagram to help them make adjustments to their own idiosyncratic patterns.

“Most of us recognize that we get reactive in some of our relationships at home or at work, or in day-to-day interactions like at the food store,” she said. “The enneagram helps to explain why we react the way we do, and helps us to understand why others do what they do, and once we understand that, we don’t have to take things so personally anymore.”

Wright’s goal is for participants to come away from the seminar with an understanding of the nine personality types, and identify which of them they are.

“It’ll offer insight into themselves, and they will undoubtedly recognize their significant others in some of the types as well,” she said.

Wright, who has a master’s degree in counseling and has spent more than 20 years as an addiction counselor, was introduced to the enneagram by her daughter nearly 12 years ago.

“Through my work, I’ve been interested in a lot of modalities in healing and self-growth,” she said. “My daughter encouraged me to take a look at the enneagram, because she was finding it impactful. And when I took the time to read it, I found it to be immensely helpful that I had to change directions in my career.”

The enneagram is one of many programs utilized by the Christian Center of Park City to “meet people at their point of need,” Wright said.

“That means different things for different people, so we really want to offer a wide variety of modalities,” she said. “The enneagram is a different tool for people to utilize.”

Because it has been a while since the Christian Center has presented an introduction to the enneagram class, Wright felt it was time.

“We thought it would be good and fun to start at the beginning,” she said. “Hopefully that will drum up some interest in people who have heard about the system and who want to learn more.”